BLOGS
Educational blogs for parents and professionals
11 Music Activities to do With Your Family During Corona Virus Shut Down
This is a challenging time for many right now as businesses and schools are closing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 virus. There are millions of children that are having to stay home and one of the biggest concerns for parents is …
“What do I do with my children all day?”.
As a music therapist in the field for the past 15 years I have spent a lot of time helping families create and implement at home music programs from educational to a multitude of other therapeutic goals. As fear and worry surrounds us during this shutdown it is of utmost importance to also focus on optimum mental health. Music therapy has sown increase positive benefits over the years in multiple research studies that help reduce anxiety, depression, fear and worry. What a more important time right now to use music more than ever.
Here is a list of some of the musical activities that I suggest you share and implement with your family during this time. I highly suggest you to make it fun, make it educational and make it meaningful and memorable! These are times that children will remember most that during stress and chaos “my family came together through music and play”.
Enjoy sharing music with your family during this time!
1. Music Improvisation or Family Jam Session
Most music therapists use music improvisation (or jamming) as a way of connection, communication and helping clients redirect their energy and focus. You do NOT need to be a musician to improvise music. You can utilize instruments that you may already have at home or make it fun and creative and find objects around your home to use as instruments. For example: Pots and pans, buckets, keys, plastic containers, and much more can be fun improvisation instruments. You can also make a fun scavenger hunt for your family to see how many items they can find at home to turn into an instrument. Enjoy the creativity, sounds and rhythms you can make together as a family. Solos are also fun as well!
2. Song Play Lists
Music therapists often help clients collect songs to create various playlist to match their emotions or create memories of monumental moments. You can take some time where you and your family chooses an emotion and search for songs that they can place in each play list. Children can even do this on their own if you give them directions and access to YouTube to find songs that fit each category. Some category examples are:
Music to motivate me
Music that makes me happy
Music from my favorite movie
Music that clams me, etc.
Music family favorites
3. Music Dance Party
Music and movement is central to our bodies and can help us regulate our emotions and allow us to release tension. When music is played our whole bodies receive the therapeutic benefits of its vibration and sound. Mewsic moves (play on words intended) us to move and dance so why not create a list of your families favorite dance songs and move together and have fun.
4. Karaoke
Singing has been known to decrease anxiety and depression as well as a powerful tool in expressing our feelings. Find some family favorites and sing along together. Youtube has a lot of karaoke sing along versions of songs that could be fun for you and your family.
5. Song Rewriting
Music therapists utilize song rewriting activities in many sessions to help clients connect to their feelings or to express themselves. Song rewriting can be made easier by taking out various words from a familiar song for your family to fill in the blanks and to make the song their own.
For example: You are my sunshine can be rewritten as:
You are my ___?___, you make me ___?___, when skies are ___?___…
6. Music to Relax and Practice Mindfulness
Photo by Jyotirmoy Gupta on Unsplash
Music can have a therapeutic impact on helping us relax, practice mindfulness, focus on positivity and allow us to let go of negative/fearful thoughts. This can be a useful tool right now to help children (and parents) to practice relaxation, medication and practice focusing on gratitude and positivity in a time of uncertainty and worry.
You can take time to go through all your families favorite songs that help them to feel calm. I prefer to use music that has no lyrics to help focus on images or thoughts that come to mind when you sit, listen and focus on mindfulness.
7. Music and Art
Music and art is a powerful combination to help express, focus and share our thoughts and/or feelings. Music and art is also a therapeutic combination to help with expression, mindfulness and exploring creativity. You can have your children create art (such as painting, drawing or collaging) to match the music or their feelings.
8. Make Your Own Instruments
This has usually been a favorite in my sessions with the children that I work with. Make this activity fun and encourage your children to find things around the house that they can use to make their own instruments.
For example: empty prescription medication bottles can turn into a fun musical shaker if filled with rice or beans. Also, plastic containers can turn into a fun guitar or stringed instrument with elastic bands around it. Pots and pans are always a favorite with young children but not so much with parents! (I learned how to play the drums with my parents pots and pans set)
9. Music Trivia
This will take a little bit of research and time but can be a fun activity to learn more about music, lyrics and artists. For example:
How many songs can you list that has the word HAPPY in it?
Name 3 songs by Beyonce
Who sang Let it go?
10. Learn a New instrument
For those of you that may have an instrument at home this can be an ideal time to sit down and learn some of the basics of this instrument together. Youtube has many amazing videos on basic piano, guitar and ukulele strategies to name a few. I highly recommend ukulele as it is an affordable instrument as well as easier to learn than guitar, especially for younger children.
11. Educational Learning Through Music
Many music therapist utilize music to help children learn new educational material that they may have struggles with at school. Turn math, reading and social stories to a whole new level by creating a simple melody to make learning fun and easier to learn. How did most of us learn the alphabet? We sang it!! Make learning fun through music. For example:
Create math song melodies to learn addition, subtraction, division, multiplication and more.
Use rhythm and melody to help with spelling
I hope you find these 11 musical interventions helpful for you and your family during this time of being homebound and trying to fill the time. Also, please share any of your ideas or musical videos of you and your family creating music together as I’d love to see what you create together.
I welcome any additions to this list and love to share musical resources to help all families during this time. Please share in the comments below.
Mewsic Moves is also offering telemusictherapy sessions during this time for those that need additional mental health support in dealing with anxiety and depression or also those that want to continue individual music therapy sessions but are practicing social distancing.
For more information please reach out to us:
email: john@mewsicmoves.com
phone: (818) 877-6797
Let’s be social
Music is a Companion: Music Therapy and Mental Health Awareness
In my 15 years of work as a music therapist I have supported many clients who struggle on a daily basis with mental health challenges depression and anxiety to mention a few. Many of clients throughout Los Angeles share the same story of feeling isolated, alone and like no one understands. Others also share the immense levels of shame and stigma that accompany these psychological mental health diagnoses. In my sessions I open up a safe space where each can share their experiences and stories of these intense feelings of embarrassment, shame and even stigmas that they face (many by their own family members!).
Just this past week in a music therapy mental health support group I encouraged clients to create a list of musical artists that they were aware of that lives with mental health condition(s) and shares it openly and publicly. This sparked a huge discussion around the topic and led us to share songs that reflected mental health awareness tat were either written or performed by these specific individual artists.
Musical artists that came to mind for most of the group members were artists such as: Lady Gaga, Demi Lovato, Eminem, Macklemore, Pink, and Kesha just to name a few. We then shared specific songs and discussed the artists realness about their mental health struggles in their songs and lyrics. Many clients shared, not only did they connect to the artists and their lyrics but that the music was also a “companion” for them when they felt like “no one was around” or “like no one understood”. One client shared,
“when I was all alone and depressed I would listen to Kesha and felt like she was there with me; through her lyrics I knew she understood and therefore helped me with my loneliness and knowing others do understand”.
May being mental health awareness month, I am grateful to so many music artists (as well as other public figures) that step into vulnerability and share the truth about their own mental health challenges. This place of vulnerability and sharing as Brene Brown speaks of in all her social platforms and books is pure “courage” and helping others to connect and not feel alone in their time of hardship.
If you feel alone, or like no one else understands please find solace in some others stories and music that many artists have shared. And furthermore, allow music to be that therapy in your life during during this difficult time. Find below a short list of songs that clients have shared this week in honor of mental health awareness and how music and many artists are shedding light, awareness and education.
If you are experiencing and forms of mental health challenges please do not hesitate to reach out to local therapists and or treatment centers, we are here for you. This is not a time to give into shame or embarrassment as majority of people struggle on a daily basis with mental health challenges and you do not need to do this alone. "You are not alone”.
Some songs clients chose that reflect Mental Health Awareness:
Glorious - Macklemore
Sill Feel - Half Alive
I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes) - The 1975
Everybody’s Lonely - Jukebox the Ghost
Scars to Your Beautiful - Alessia Cara
Rainbow - Kesha
Here I Am - Leona Lewis
In My Blood - Shawn Mendes
Shake it Out - Florence and the Machine
Everybody Hurts - REM
Throughout mental health awareness month we will be posting a song each day on our facebook page that reflects mental health awareness in music. Let music be your therapy, guide and your companion. Please feel free to share some of your songs as well in the comments below or on our social media platforms. We love to share and connect through music.
Let’s Be Social:
Banner Photo by OC Gonzalez on Unsplash
Music Therapy and Mental Health: A Form of Treatment
Music Therapy
& Mental Health Awareness
In most of my music therapy groups this week I dedicated time away from engaging in music but rather to engage in conversations around music and mental health since May is mental health awareness month. I know some of you just gasped and thought, how dare a music therapist do a session without engaging in music ! Well, I did and it was quite powerful!
In most of the sessions the clients were engaged in some deep and emotional discussions around music in our culture and artists that have contributed a great deal to our music as art; many from their own experiences with mental health challenges.
Artists names such as Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, and so many others came to surface. Clients shared that these artists music has touched their lives in so many ways over the years of their personal struggles with mental health issues. Some have expressed, “It was the only thing that got me through” while others expressed “It was a relief to know that I was not alone”.
Client's have described these songs as being a "source of strength in times of adversity". I encouraged the clients to share songs from artists who gave them words of encouragement that in turn were also dealing with similar mental health challenges.
Music in all forms has been therapeutic for centuries and I want to highlight that even though many of these artists songs are therapeutic I want to honor and thank them that they had the courage to step into vulnerability and share their hurt and challenges through words and song with us. These artists shared personal stories in their songs that continue to support, validate and help many of the clients that I work with in our music therapy groups.
This month let's recognize that much of the music we listen to on a daily basis very likely has been a form of music therapy for the individual artists themselves. Its been a way for them to share their story, their pain and help support others along their journey. That's the beauty in music and creativity -- it can often come from pain but then transform into something beautiful and powerful, similar to the Eminem song, “Beautiful Pain”.
I encourage you to share your story, share your song, share your art and help others find comfort and peace and normalize that mental health issues are real and we can shed some light in the darkness.
Find a list of songs below that clients have chosen in music therapy groups throughout the month that were created and performed from artists that too have struggled with mental illness. This is just a small representation of the many artists out there that struggle and have used their voices and creativity as an outlet, a way to help heal others and help empower their listeners from not feeling alone in their experiences with mental health challenges. (click on song titles to view the video)
Britney Spears - Stronger
Eminem - The Monster
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Natalie Grant - The Real Me
Demi Lovato - Skyscraper
Alessia Cara - Scars to Your Beautiful
Macklemore - Otherside
Lady Gaga - Perfect Illusion
Rachel Platten - Fight Song
Justin Bieber - Love Yourself
Do you have other songs that you could add to this list? If so, I would love to hear from you. Please leave a link to the video or artist below in the comment section. Thank you. #musicandmentalhealth
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